At The Payroll Site, we are independent of the accounting software firms, which leaves us free to integrate with all of the accounting systems which small businesses actually use.

With the exception of Business Accountz, these integrations are achieved through an accounting API: the accounting software offers an API and we integrate with it. An API is just a well-defined way to transfer data. The accounting software firm specifies the format of the data and the steps of the transfer process, including how customers give their authorisation for the transfer. We then extend our system, using that specification, to enable customers to transfer their payroll figures.

The most popular cloud accounting systems all offer APIs, but very few desktop accounting packages do. The following list shows the accounting systems we link with, in the order they were integrated.

2009 Kashflow

2010 Business Accountz

2011 Xero

2012 QuickBooks Online

2013 QuickFile

2017 FreeAgent

2017 Sage One

Some of the above systems include their own payroll functionality, but they don’t have the same feature set as we do. Most of these accounting systems only have integration with one independent, UK payroll system, which is The Payroll Site.

The API offered by each accounting system is different and uses its own data format for requests and responses. For our customers, we make these interfaces look as similar to each other as possible, so if you’ve sent your data across to one system, it isn’t difficult to send it to a different system. In all cases, you are in control of the process – our system doesn’t update your accounting system until you press the button.

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Steven is one of the founders of The Payroll Site. He writes about things affecting small businesses, especially those things connected with payroll. He's also a Maths graduate and a Chartered IT Professional and has a few views about technology, maths and the misuse of both.